I got this same line...and I think XABF really believed it - hell, I believed it, for a while.

You know that more people are staying single now than ever.

I didn't commit until I was 43. I had no lack of dates , potential boyfriends or just get laid if I felt like it. , if I were single now it would be the same.

Being single isn't the Ebola virus. Lol. If my choice was your guy or single forever I choose being the crazy cat lady

I agree with being the cat lady. Heck, I became the cat lady the last 2.5 years I was there with him. I started with one cat and then got three more at once. XAH complained that I loved the cats more than him (who wouldn't?!) and once told me that he would kill the first cat.

Cats are definitely better company that abusive alcoholics any day.

Sue

I second the cats compared to what you have. Being single is a million times better than being married to my ex. Hands down the best (and hardest) decision I made so far in my journey of life.

If I knew at 25 what I know at 36, I am sure I would make better choices. It is not only about alcoholism, it is that my whole attitude changed.I actually have an attitude. LOL

It is how I see people, interact with them, and honestly I love this new me.

BTW, I am a crazy dog lady now. I would pick single life over a month living with an addict any time.

Oh my! I hope you do not fall for this emotional blackmail. I am just so very sorry...

Please beware of these thought processes, they will only lead you to justify unacceptable behavior. You make it sound like he´s the hostage of some terrible spirit called alcoholism, that beneath it all he is a good, honest non-lying person. But the thing is, HE is the one who is lying to you. He isn´t the victim in this situation, YOU are.
He doesn´t get to hurt you and be a victim at the same time.
He chooses to lie because this makes it easier for him to go on drinking - in other words, he chooses alcohol over you.

The sad thing is that you probably already know this on some level, but because you have much invested in a future with him, you don´t allow yourself to see it. So then, the most likely outcome for you will be a lot of resentment and repressed anger. Better get angry now and act accordingly!

Hoping, I'm really sorry you feel stigma and judgements from your F&F about not being married by mid-30s and for breaking off an engagement.

Your family must be very conservative indeed if they don't approve of you leaving an engagement because you realise it was a mistake. You must always do what's best for you, and if they don't support you, that's sad, but you are an adult and perfectly capable of deciding for yourself. Just make sure you're not projecting your own judgements of yourself onto them (it's called mind-reading and it's often wrong).

I suggest you find a counsellor you can talk to about your need to please and other worries you have about where your life is going. You may be thinking it's either you ABF or no-one, and that's something you need to examine.

I also picked up about your ABF saying he'll consider out-patient if you get back together. This is a big red flag. As a recovering A I see this as half-hearted. He may have wonderful fantasies about what life would have been like for him without A, but making a recovery conditional shows ambivalence about becoming sober. He'll only go for it if he has an incentive.

All the best, and remember, it's as much about you as him. Find someone to talk to.

I only recently created an account here and have been reading the boards without posting. However, your post really speaks to me. If I knew then what I know now I would never have married my ex-husband. If I could go back in time I suppose I would not change things, because I have two incredible children, but I would never willingly enter a relationship with an alcoholic in any stage of the disease or recovery again. You cannot change him. You cannot heal him. You cannot be his partner and his mother and his doctor and his jailer while keeping any part of who you actually are intact. I am a shell of the person I was "before" and I am having a heck of a time finding the remains deep down inside of me now that it is "after."

Life with an alcoholic is hell. Mine lied. All the time. To the point where it became compulsive and he was lying about the most ridiculous, unnecessary things. He learned to cheat the breathalyzer. He learned to drink on Antabuse. He spent all of our money on alcohol. He went to rehab just to get us off his back, was the model patient, never even had a recommendation to go to a halfway house upon discharge, and never had any intention of spending even a day sober once he came home. He threatened to kill himself if I left him. He had seizures and spent time in the ICU unable to walk because of muscle atrophy from sitting in his chair for so long.

He endangered my children. That was the final straw and I took them and left, though I was too scared that he would kill himself to let him know it was for real. I was still codependent, though, and I used the "find my iPhone" featured to keep track of where he was, after he decided that being homeless and living in his car in the heat of summer was better than being sober. The day my parents saw police gathered around his car (which he'd parked around the corner) and thought maybe he had died in there, I dropped him off at a detox and told him that was it. I was done. He had to do this for himself. If he could sober himself up for a year then he could start to see the kids a little bit.

It took another 1.5 years for him to start treatment on his own after burning all of his bridges. It had become clear that "rock bottom" meant "dead," because the bottom just kept getting lower and lower. He is about a month out of a year-long rehab program now. Who knows what is going to happen, but I won't be a part of it other than facilitating healthy and safe interactions between him and the kids.

You are at the beginning. You haven't tied your life and your finances to him. You haven't had children who will need therapy and will still suffer forever. You still have a chance.

Hoping,
Wow, look at all this advice, amazing. Look at all the men and women's comments regarding life with an a. As you can see it sure isn't easy and it sucks to love an a. I did it for 34 painful years, 26 married. I wished I did my research about addiction when I was young, but I always thought my addict was different. I felt I could handle anything. I was wrong. What a mistake I made.

I still love my axh, but would never, never, never engage again with a relationship with him. The horrendous pain he caused me over my life, I will never get that time back, it is part of "my" story, and my innocent childrens.

It really doesn't matter to anyone on this forum if you continue to date or even marry this man. We just want you to see that each and everyone of us have been affeced by addiction. (Theirs, not ours) Not one person said anything positive about it. You are not going to be the exception to the rule, it will eventually happen to you also.

Stop making excuses for his horrible behavior, he is an addict for life and nothing is going to change that. I am happy you reached out for guidance. You have it in a nut shell. You can embrace it or you can continue down this lonely path and revisit us In a year or two.

Sending hugs and peace to you!!

I thank you with all my heart for sharing your stories with me. I now understand that I did not make a mistake by moving out and by calling off our wedding planning 3 months ago. Someone must really be praying for me.

I do know that I really need professional counselling. Last night, I woke up at 4am, panicking and I called him and asked him to send me his breathalyzer test. He did it and he passed. He has only been sober for 2 weeks now and I know for sure that without a proper recovery program, this will not last. I also understand that this is no longer my problem.

I need to stop asking him for these tests as all I am doing here is giving him false hope that he can get better without proper treatment and leading him on about our relationship.

Hugs, prayers and peace to all of you. Please keep sharing.

NadoMama, This seems so relevant. My ex also went to rehab just to get me off his back. His family kept saying that they have tried their hardest to send him to a rehab in the past and he would never agree to it. And now that he did it, he must really love me and must be serious about quitting - And I believed them. He was also the model patient BUT the day he got back from rehab, that same night, I caught him with alcohol. I confiscated his wallet so he does not go buy anymore. And he ended up finding cash from somewhere, was hiding cash in his sock and buying alcohol every time he went for a jog, and I did not find out about it until one day he could not make it to his regular "jogs" and had a seizure at home :( This breaks my heart.

HFC, if he wants to drink, he will find a way to drink. It doesn't matter if you take his wallet, or his car keys, or if you tell every bar and liquor store in the neighborhood to turn him away. It doesn't matter if he uses a breathalyzer, or antabuse. It wouldn't matter if he was jobless and homeless. If he wants to drink, he will drink.

My experience was a little different from yours--I didn't spend much time trying to control my STBXAH's actual drinking. However, I DID engage in a tremendous amount of obsessive and compulsive snooping and spying, bound and determine to "prove" that he was lying. With recovery, I have come to understand how damaging that behavior was to my OWN psyche (in part because my gut was right--I was constantly second guessing what I knew to be true. I had to learn that it was enough to just know what I knew), as well as what a monumental waste of time it was. No amount of evidence I uncovered would ever make my STBXAH admit his lies in full. I was sucked into a perpetual vortex of gaslighting, self-doubt, and lies. I was the only one with the power to claw my way out of that vortex, because my STBXAH certainly wasn't going to stop.

Absolutely NOTHING in my STBXAH's actions demonstrated the smallest desire to stop drinking, and it seems to be the same with your ex. Someone who drinks the day they return from treatment, and takes every single opportunity to drink in secret after treatment, has no actual plan to quit and find recovery.

I married my alcoholic. We have a son together, and because of that I will be tied to him FOREVER. I can't go "no contact" with him, as much as I would like to. I'm glad that the responses here have helped you find peace with your decision to break off the engagement. I hope you will continue to work on yourself and keep your emotional well-being in the forefront, while your ex walks his own path, wherever it may lead.

You are one wise lady!

There is an expression used around here…………

Alcoholics don’t have relationships – they take hostages.

He is negotiating HIS recovery (kind of, sort of, maybe) by using YOU in saying that if you say you are back together he will “consider” going to an out-patient. This is nothing but BS.

There is another expression………..there are no victims-only volunteers.

Stop volunteering to be his victim. Stop doing research on the recovery you hope he chooses but in fact he is not.

I think I would much rather go through life single and in a state of peace and serenity then in a relationship with anxiety, mist-trust and panic because of an alcoholic.

Most of us come from a feeling of dread when we think about leaving them. We place ourselves in a very empowering and controlling state by thinking that without us they would really go downhill. And the fact is all we really do is become a road block, a hurdle that they must get over or around in order to achieve their goal – to drink because that’s what alcoholics who don't want recovery do.

No. I would not.

You wrote: "Unfortunately though, instead of continuing to support him, I have to abandon him just because he is failing. If he didn’t love me, he would not be trying so hard, just to fail. "

You are NOT responsible for his success or failure. If he is trying to get sober because he loves you, he will not succeed. You are NOT abandoning him, nor are you responsible for staying there because he is trying. I know you love him. He loves you. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

I love my STBXAH. He is an alcoholic and I left. Those two things are independent of each other. It may seem like some of us are being harsh, but to me, I feel like I'm being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past here, and wish I could tell my younger self to not get involved.

Not sure you need another opinion after all the wonderful ones you've already received - but the answer is a resounding "NO!".

Do yourself a favor and stop, do a 180, and run like h*ll in the opposite direction and NEVER look back. Short-term pain for long-term happiness. Especially if you would ever consider bringing children into the equation, they deserve better. You are young still - I didn't get married until I was 40, and if I knew it would turn out like it has, I'd still be unmarried at 52, and be happier.

Be strong - you deserve better.
C-Oh Dad

*hugs*

Unfortunately if you stay entangled with this man that feeling of panic and fear will grow and twist you up until you feel like you can no longer breathe. You will start to feel insane and like you can't trust your own instincts...it will only get worse for you. He has lied before to feed his demons and he will do it again. Leopards don't change their spots. For me trust was essential to saving my marriage and I just could NOT bring myself to trust his lying mouth no matter how painfully that turned out for both of us and our children. It wasn't ever about not loving him. I loved him, still do. I just could not love him better no matter how hard I tried or how much of myself I sacrificed along the way.

Please, please, PLEASE!, do find yourself a counsellor, one who has some knowledge of addiction. You worry about getting yourself healthy and give him the space he needs to truly find recovery for the RIGHT reasons(none of which you can control)

And in case you haven't guessed yet.... a resounding: ***NO! I would NOT marry an alcoholic!!!*** ...ever again.

Hugs and prayers to you, HopeForCure

Only my opinion and view, but I think it's worth considering this. If he did enter recovery, he probably would change as a person. He would HAVE to change to stay sober. So even if you hung around and he came through on his promises, you would not be marrying the person you knew all of these years. While you might think "Well that would be a good thing" what I mean is, if he ever seriously got into recovery, he probably wouldn't even know who he was himself after years of drinking, so just because he gave up the drink, wouldn't make it all plain sailing from there.